Etruscan Sculptures [antikvár]

In classical times, Etruria, the fertile land between the Tiber and the Arno stretching from the spine of the Apennines westward to the Tyrrhenian Sea, was inhabited by a people the Greeks called Tyrsenoi or Tyrrhenoi and the Romans Etrusci or Tusci. We know them as Etruscans; according to the historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus, they called themselves the Rasenna. The Etruscan language is the only non-Indo-European language known in Italy in historic times. Except for a few words and phrases it has not yet been deciphered, but its connections, so far as they can be made out, are with the pre-Indo-European languages of the eastern Mediterranean and Asia Minor. The question of whether the language came to Italy from the east in the Iron Age after Indo-European languages were established everywhere else in Italy, or whether the Etruscans were descendents of pre-Indo-European speakers surviving into historic times, still remains to be answered. The consensus in antiquity, best expressed by Herodotus, was that the Etruscans came from Asia. But Dionysius of Halicarnassus believed they were natives of Italy and formed a very ancient nation agreeing with no other in its language or its customs. There is no record of what the Etruscans themselves may have believed about their prehistory. We know from Greek and Latin writers such details of Etruscan history as impinged on Greece or Rome. The Greeks, in addition, are forever harping on Etruria's penchant for piracy and the luxurious way of life. They also concede that the Etruscans invented horns and